The art of showing up for your friends.

I am currently learning how to check on myself first before checking up on others. If I’m in a bad place myself, then how can I effectively care for others. So, assuming I’m feeling good and want to show up for others, the first thing to remember is to keep my focus on them.

Your focus should be on your friend while they're sharing their issues with you. You should be listening and do as much as possible not to jump to conclusions based on one’s opinions. Forming one’s pre-conceived opinion usually comes from a good place with good intention but other times you might not be helping your friend at all.

Friend: oh, I’m having a tough time at work while working on a specific task and It’s been draining out my soul.

Me: Well, I also had this similar issue but my situation was with the tax authority and ….. *keeps yapping*

Friend: Uhh, it’s nice that you heard me out and share similar feeling but instead of hearing me out, you kept on responding about your situation with the tax authority.

The above conversation tells a lot about how we shouldn’t show up for our friends. We need to learn how to listen to hear people versus listen to respond. Listening to respond often leads us to a path where we miss the point of the conversation and pay more attention to “how do I respond?”.

When in doubt about how to respond to a friend, ask questions. Simple questions like, “how can I be of help?” “do you need my input about this situation” “how are you feeling about it and what do you intend to do next?”. Asking questions goes a very long way and can help both parties understand the problem properly. None of us could come up with the perfect response every time nor do we need to. Just listening could actually be the trick to solving the problem.